What Are the Gobshites Saying These Days?

Welcome back to our weekly survey of Our National Dialogue, which, as you know, sounds like what Mozart would have produced if he'd written a Concerto For Table Saw And Seagull.

Before moving along to the Sunday palaver-palooza, we should pause and congratulate Maureen Dowd for producing what, to me, anyway, was the shining, glorious quintessence of her entire career as a political commentator, to say nothing of loosing finally every bat that's been bouncing off the walls of her peculiar belfry for the past 20 years. Combining Stuff I Read This Week with a bit of discreet gay-baiting, a dollop of material that she first tried out while smoking in the Girls Room at Our Lady, Queen Of Clairol, and a whole lot of her unique ability to project her own Daddy neuroses on every Democratic politician within a 20-mile radius — it looks like Ed Rendell gets to stand in for her sainted Irish pops these days, and, I swear, you can almost hear the phlegm ringing in the spitoon — MoDo apparently has decided that the president is no longer man enough for her. He is weak on foreign policy because Willard Romney (!) said so. He is too aggressive overseas because the Times says so. He is a character out of Walker Percy who nonetheless dreams of being Spider-man, but doesn't have the guts to pull on the mask and swing from tall buildings. He failed to use his awesome hypnotic powers to make Mitch McConnell, and Jim DeMint, and Ben Nelson, and Eric Cantor stop being assholes. One of his old girlfriends said he was unsure of his place in the world. (Daddy always knows his place in the world. It's in the recliner, half-hammered on PBR's, watching the Redskins.) He is on a "voyage of self-discovery," which is not what presidents do. Presidents lead and, after a hard day of leading, they come home and say grace over the Friday tuna casserole. Do I have to go on with this? Seriously? Okay, let's just take one paragraph from this magnum dopus and see where it takes us:

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The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading "I Meow for Michelle" for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen.

Maureen is... not stimulated, so, therefore, neither is the nation. The president is sinking on the all-important Campaign Tchotchkes Index. The Souvenir Spatula Average has fallen through the floor. Let's dip into the psychological freaky-deaky one more time, shall we?

Covering a humorous W. at the unveiling of his portrait, the White House press actually seemed nostalgic for the president who bollixed up Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina and the economy — a sure sign that the Obama magic is flagging.

He screwed up the entire country. He's still screwing up the entire country, but the man is entertaining. One might even say stimulating. Because the White House press corps "seemed nostalgic" for those glorious days of being lied into wars and watching entire cities drown. This is the same White House press corps which is presently touting this outbreak of Hibernian menopausal horse-hockey as an important moment in the presidential campaign. My lord, we are so screwed.

Over at Dancin' Dave's Disco Dance Party, where they are truly nostalgic to times like this, on the weekend before Wisconsin decides whether or not to rid itself of an extremist Republican governor, they exhumed John Kasich, the remarkably unpopular governor of Ohio who got his balls kicked through the roof of his mouth last year by an angry citizenry. Kasich was all about uncertainty, and about waiting for the return of the Confidence Fairies. And about being a Man Of The Heartland!

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David, in 1997, I was the architect, one of the chief architects, of the balanced budget. We didn't raise taxes. In fact, we cut capital gains. We also balanced our budget, paid down the largest amount of debt in history. And, you know, we were running huge surpluses. And, you know, raising taxes, that's not the problem with Congress. Frankly, this whole city is dysfunctional, you know. And the executive is not leading. You can't — it's like blame. I'm an executive in Ohio. I can't blame the legislature for things not getting done. I have to accept responsibility.

Wait. Didn't all that great stuff also happen because of the Clinton budget of 1993, the one not a single Republican voted for, not even one named Kasich? Wasn't Bill Clinton president before 1997? And, if I'd tried to eliminate collective bargaining in my state, only to see the law eviscerated at the polls, I'd walk softly myself.

But this week's blue-ribbon cluster of fk was... This Week! Angry schoolmarm George Effing Will was on, fresh off his triumph of calling Donald Trump as bad name last week, and back wandering the discount aisles of the Bad Analogies Warehouse. Will sees in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent attempt to keep people from drinking sodas of the capacity of the Exxon Valdez a parallel to those spoilsport climate-change types who got all up in his grill when he wrote something stupid about that topic a while back....

"This is one of the reasons liberals are so enamored over the issue of climate change...They say all our behaviors in some way effect the climate, therefore, the government — meaning, we liberals, the party of government — can fine tune all your behavior right down to the light bulbs you use."

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No liberal I know is "enamored" of the issue of climate change. Most of them wish it wasn't an issue at all. Most of them wish we never had to talk about it in the first place. No liberals want to see the cute little polar bears drown. Most of them wish we didn't have charlatans like George Effing Will running the ball for the coal-fired denial industry. In fact, most of the liberals I know would gladly chip in for a 24-ounce Big Gulp of STFU for George Effing Will if he promised never to mention it again.

Also, the show had Romney adviser — and the blog's former colleague at Wingo Square — Eric Fehrnstrom on to talk about the economy. Paul Krugman was also on. This made things resoundingly unpretty:

FEHRNSTROM: Oh, he's for — he's for — he's for the Ryan plan. He believes it goes in the right direction. The governor has also put forward a plan to reduce spending by $500 billion by the year 2016. In fact, he's put details on the table about how exactly he would achieve that. So to say he doesn't have a plan to — a plan to restrain government spending is just not true.

KRUGMAN: Can I say, the Ryan plan — and I guess this is what counts as a personal attack — but it isn't. It's not an attack on the person; it's an attack on the plan. The plan's a fraud. The plan is a big bunch of tax cuts, some specified spending cuts, basically for poor people, and then a huge magic asterisk which is supposed to turn into a deficit reduction plan, but, in fact, if you look what's actually in it, it's a deficit-increasing plan. And so to say that — just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth. That's not — if that's — if that's being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship.

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